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Essay Does the Madman Theory Actually Work? Trump likes to think his unpredictability is an asset. January 7, 2025, 12:06 AM Comment icon View Comments ( 6 ) By Daniel W. Drezner , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. An illustration shows Donald Trump smiling zanily with yellow hair flying one direction and a red tie snaking through his ears and around his head wildly. Adrià Fruitós illustration for Foreign Policy My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. Subscribe Now | Log In Foreign & Public Diplomacy United States When Donald Trump first ran for U.S. president in 2016, he sounded mad an awful lot of the time—in both senses of the word. Trump had no problem displaying anger on the campaign trail. In a 2016 Republican primary debate, he leaned into this emotion, saying he would “gladly accept the mantle of anger” because he believed the country was a “mess” and run by incompetent people. Trump also embraced the notion that he was a different kind of mad. In statement after statement, he stressed that he would be a different type of president because he was willing to be a little bit crazy, a little bit unpredictable. In 2015, he told an interviewer, quoting another businessman, “‘There’s a certain unpredictability about Trump that’s great.’” In his first major foreign-policy speech of that campaign, he blasted U.S. foreign policy during the Barack Obama years, saying , “We must as a nation be more unpredictable.” Trump sounded different from post-Cold War presidents, but his sentiments echoed Richard Nixon, who also liked to get mad in both meanings of the word. Indeed, according to his staffer H.R. Haldeman , Nixon coined the term “madman theory,” explaining that he wanted the North Vietnamese to believe he was capable of doing anything to bring the Vietnam War to an end—up to and including the use of nuclear weapons. The madman theory posits that a leader who behaves as if he could do just about anything has a better chance of persuading other global actors to make concessions they otherwise would not make. When Donald Trump first ran for U.S. president in 2016, he sounded mad an awful lot of the time—in both senses of the word. Trump had no problem displaying anger on the campaign trail. In a 2016 Republican primary debate, he leaned into this emotion, saying he would “gladly accept the mantle of anger” because he believed the country was a “mess” and run by incompetent people. Trump also embraced the notion that he was a different kind of mad. In statement after statement, he stressed that he would be a different type of president because he was willing to be a little bit crazy, a little bit unpredictable. In 2015, he told an interviewer, quoting another businessman, “‘There’s a certain unpredictability about Trump that’s great.’” In his first major foreign-policy speech of that campaign, he blasted U.S. foreign policy during the Barack Obama years, saying , “We must as a nation be more unpredictable.” The Winter 2025 FP magazine cover includes an illustration of Donald Trump holding segments of a broken rollercoaster as cars go through a loop above his head. A headline says: Trump World. This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of Foreign Policy magazine. Trending Articles Trump’s Ambitious Week One Agenda He has pledged to take immediate action on issues from border security to trade. Powered By Advertisement Trump’s Ambitious Week One Agenda X Trump sounded different from post-Cold War presidents, but his sentiments echoed Richard Nixon, who also liked to get mad in both meanings of the word. Indeed, according to his staffer H.R. Haldeman , Nixon coined the term “madman theory,” explaining that he wanted the North Vietnamese to believe he was capable of doing anything to bring the Vietnam War to an end—up to and including the use of nuclear weapons. The madman theory posits that a leader who behaves as if he could do just about anything has a better chance of persuading other global actors to make concessions they otherwise would not make. Nixon subsequently denied that the conversation ever happened, but the idea of the madman theory has an intellectual lineage that stretches back to Niccolò Machiavelli. Furthermore, the scholarly literature on the theory has shifted in recent years—suggesting that under certain circumstances, such a gambit might work for someone in Trump’s position. Could Trump’s madman theory be so crazy that it just might work? In some instances during his first term, Trump intentionally cultivated a reputation as a madman. This was most evidently on display in his approaches to North and South Korea. For much of 2017, Trump ratcheted up his rhetoric toward North Korea, telling reporters that August, “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. … They will be met with fire, fury, and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.” In his U.N. General Assembly speech one month later, Trump nicknamed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “Rocket Man” and promised that the United States could “totally destroy North Korea.” Trump’s madman approach extended to South Korea. In 2017, his administration sought to renegotiate the terms of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. Jonathan Swan reported in Axios that Trump explicitly ordered chief trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer to tell his South Korean counterparts that Trump was a madman: “You tell them, ‘This guy’s so crazy he could pull out any minute.’ … You tell them if they don’t give the concessions now, this crazy guy will pull out of the deal.” Swan further noted, “Plenty of world leaders think the president is crazy—and he seems to view that madman reputation as an asset.” Trump stopped taunting Kim in return for three meetings that generated little beyond some glossy photo-ops. The free trade agreement was successfully renegotiated, though the changes to the deal were minor. Still, acolytes of the former and future president could argue that Trump did well for the United States. For all his rantings and ravings, Trump secured modest trade concessions from South Korea and a brief pause in missile tests from North Korea—all without having to carry out his seemingly crazy threats. In other words, he was sounding irrational for entirely rational reasons. This was different from Trump’s staffers and subordinates telling reporters that he was acting like a madman. That trope was prevalent enough for CNN’s Jim Sciutto to write a book about Trump’s foreign policy titled The Madman Theory . According to Bob Woodward’s Fear , White House staff secretary Rob Porter spent a third of his time talking Trump down from his impulsive ideas. Woodward himself concluded that the United States “was tethered to the words and actions of an emotionally overwrought, mercurial and unpredictable leader.” Yet the idea that by acting like a madman, a leader could profit in world politics has a longer pedigree than Nixon. In Discourses on Livy , Machiavelli suggested that “at times it is a very wise thing to simulate madness.” In the early years of the Cold War, strategists Daniel Ellsberg and Thomas Schelling thought about the possible virtues of cultivating a reputation for madness in coercive bargaining situations. Schelling wrote in The Strategy of Conflict that “it is not a universal advantage in situations of conflict to be inalienably and manifestly rational.” If others believe a madman could do just about anything if he does not get his way, the threat of escalation becomes more credible—making it logical to concede more to de-escalate. The ploy benefits leaders who are deemed mad because of their extreme preferences rather than their extreme tactics. Neither Ellsberg nor Schelling ever advocated for a U.S. president to behave in this way. In the end, neither of them thought the madman gambit would work well over the long run. And until recently, the scholarly literature on the madman theory was equally skeptical of the likelihood of success. For example, according to multiple first-person and scholarly accounts , Nixon’s madman gambits yielded nothing in the way of concessions. More recent work on this topic, however, has been less definitive. Penn State professor Roseanne McManus has written on this subject extensively. Her initial research suggested that under a narrow set of circumstances, the madman strategy could work. The gambit benefits leaders who are deemed mad because of their extreme preferences rather than their extreme tactics, as well as leaders who are deemed to be mad about a particular situation rather than madness being inherent in their character. In other words, actors who felt strongly about a particular issue, and only that issue, could use the madman gambit to some effect. In a follow-up paper , McManus concluded that the madman approach “may be helpful in crisis bargaining … when the reputation for madness is slight.” This does seem to be a fair description of Trump. Other recent research argues that there can be virtues in unpredictability as a strategic doctrine. There are many reasons to doubt that Trump will be able to effectively play the madman in his second term, however. The most obvious is that Trump’s first-term efforts at coercive bargaining went largely for naught. His administration’s track record on economic coercion was less than stellar . Trump’s greatest foreign-policy success—the Abraham Accords—was due to proffering inducements rather than crazily threatening sticks. Trump’s madman schtick worked better with U.S. allies than adversaries. The former group of countries, rattled by his threats to withdraw from long-standing alliances and trade treaties, at least made some public displays of fealty. Trump, however, was too busy trying to ingratiate himself with the autocratic rulers of China and Russia to act crazy in front of them. His efforts to employ the madman strategy with Iran proved mixed. He approved the drone strike that killed Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force—but only after he backed down at the last minute from retaliating against Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia. In a recent interview , Trump even suggested that he was the calm, rational one compared with National Security Advisor John Bolton. This highlights another problem: Most foreign leaders are now intimately familiar with Trump’s playbook. One reason Nixon’s madman gambit failed was that Soviet officials, familiar with Nixon from his decades in public office, knew when he was pretending to play the madman. As one Soviet official explained , “Mr. Nixon used to exaggerate his intentions regularly.” Trump’s past track record has made him more predictable to a host of foreign leaders who had to deal with him the first time around. As it turns out, the first rule of the madman theory is that you do not talk about employing the madman theory. Expecting Trump to stay silent on such matters, however, is a fool’s errand. What is worrisome is that this time around, Trump might think he can pull it off even when the rest of the world does not. Finally, as the scholarly literature has stressed , successful coercive bargaining requires two kinds of credible commitment . First, the target has to believe that the other actor will carry out their threats, no matter how costly they are. Second, the target must also believe that the threatening actor will cease and desist from any coercion once an agreement has been reached. Acting like a madman might make the first kind of commitment more plausible, but it makes the second kind of commitment less plausible. Or, to put it more plainly: What is the likelihood that any foreign-policy leader will believe Trump when he gives his word about anything? As McManus put it to me in an email, “Most perceived madmen do not benefit from their madness reputations.” Trump’s attempt to reprise his madman approach to international relations is unlikely to work during his second term, but he will likely try it anyway. Trump is a man of few moves, and this is one of them. His political allies noted during his first term that Trump is rarely playing three-dimensional chess: “More often than not he’s just eating the pieces.” What is worrisome is that this time around, he might think he can pull it off even when the rest of the world does not. Trump’s improbable journey from convicted felon to second-term president could convince him to take even more risks. As one Trump advisor told Politico in November, “Look, he survived two assassination attempts, he’s been indicted how many times—he really is at this moment feeling kind of invincible and sort of emboldened in a way that he never has before.” The problem is, if Trump is unable to convince anyone else that he really is a madman, then the only way he can prove it is to follow through on his most outlandish threats. Maybe that would work, but it could also lead to a conflict spiraling out of control. Which sounds, to be perfectly honest, like a pretty crazy idea. This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage of the Trump transition . Follow along here . This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of Foreign Policy magazine. Thanks for supporting our journalism. This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of Foreign Policy magazine. Subscribe now to support our journalism. My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. Subscribe Now | Log In Foreign & Public Diplomacy United States Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is the author of the newsletter Drezner’s World . X: @dandrezner Read More On Donald Trump | Foreign & Public Diplomacy | History | U.S. 2024 Election | United States Join the Conversation Commenting on this and other recent articles is just one benefit of a Foreign Policy subscription. Already a subscriber? Log In . Subscribe Subscribe View 6 Comments Join the Conversation Join the conversation on this and other recent Foreign Policy articles when you subscribe now. Subscribe Subscribe Not your account? Log out View 6 Comments Join the Conversation Please follow our comment guidelines , stay on topic, and be civil, courteous, and respectful of others’ beliefs. You are commenting as . Change your username | Log out Change your username: Username I agree to abide by FP’s comment guidelines . 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